Woźniak: US LNG agreement has to be beneficial for us

“We are very welcoming towards our American partners, whom we can seriously help by opening to them our gas market,” announced Piotr Woźniak, PGNiG’s CEO told the Polish Press Agency. He also added that such a contract had to be beneficial to PGNiG.

When commenting on the possible future contract for US LNG, Woźniak admitted that the company was approaching long-term contracts with extreme caution. However, he also added that “we are very welcoming towards our American partners, whom we can seriously help by opening to them our gas market.”

During his visit to Warsaw, President Donald Trump declared that the US was ready to help Poland and other European countries to diversify their energy providers. The Polish President, Andrzej Duda said, among others, that both countries were determined to pursue cooperation regarding LNG.

Woźniak pointed to the fact that the amount of gas on the market was increasing and that its price has stabilized so, in his opinion, “in medium-term perspective it is more possible it will drop rather than stay in place.”

The CEO also stressed that the contract with Americans had to be financially attractive. “We have not signed any contracts for some time, since December 2015 to be precise, that would not be lucrative when it comes to import. I will repeat, as long as the Board stays the way it is today, we have not and will not sign a gas import contract that would not be beneficial,” he stated.

He also added that the contract had to fulfill certain standards. In his opinion, PGNiG has had good experiences regarding the import of LNG as part of spot deliveries, i.e. one-time contracts. “This is a very good forecast for the future because currently the LNG market is the buyer’s market,” he pointed out. At the beginning of June the first US LNG delivery reached the President Lech Kaczyński LNG Terminal in Świnoujście.

“We are talking about mid- and long-term LNG deliveries with various partners, including Americans and not with just one company, with many,” Woźniak informed. However, he also ensured that such negotiations were a time-consuming process. “It has to end under its own weight. Currently we don’t need to hurry to balance the market,” he explained.

He stressed that even though PGNiG was using the mentioned spot deliveries to “train for LNG deliveries”, mid- and long-term transactions were a completely different cup of tea.

The CEO also commented on the contract with Russia’s Gazprom, which he called “a drag” when it comes to the terms of deliveries. He reminded that a case at the Stockholm arbitration court has been opened regarding this. “We are hoping that the sentence will be announced in November and we are sure we will win,” he ensured.

This is about a lawsuit that PGNiG filed against Gazprom at the Stockholm arbitration court regarding the change of price terms in a September 1996 long-term contract for the purchase of natural gas (the so-called Yamal contract). According to the Polish company, Gazprom should agree to adapt the 1996 contract to the situation on the European natural gas market.